Iraq Oil Exports Down 2% on March

Iraq’s crude oil exports fell 2% in March to 2.159 million barrels a day, from 2.202 million barrels a day in the previous month, due to several days of bad weather at the Southern terminals, and damage to part of the northern export pipeline from an act of sabotage, Dow Jones Newswires reports.

A senior Iraqi oil official, Falah Alamri, told the agency on Sunday that revenue from oil sales exceeded $7 billion, compared with $6.064 billion in February, as the average selling price increased from $98.44 per barrel to between $106 and $107 per barrel.

Exports from southern terminals averaged 1.687 million barrels a day, compared with 1.708 million barrels a day in February; 472,000 barrels a day were exported from Kirkuk and Kurdish oil fields in March (or 462,000 according to Reuters), compared with 494,000 barrels a day in February.

Rather than focusing on the daily average, AKnews has highlighted the increased monthly total of 66.929 million barrels (up from 61 million), and attributed the increase to “stability and lack of technical issues”, rather than to the longer month.